Vivaldi vs Chrome

If your browser reminds you of your mind… ie. with so many open tabs that the panels start looking slightly more square, instead of their normal rectangular shape [ I’m talking like 78 browsers open in ±5 windows in total…maybe more ]…then…Vivaldi is probably for you. This is the browser, not made for the “average person”.

Definition of “average person”: checks the same 1-2 sites every single day, most likely at work, with no exception to this rule and accepts anything they read, never researches or questions the source.

I think the perfect epitome of the average persona is best described as “Simon” from David Thorne’s blog 26bslash6.com

-If you don’t know who’s David Thorne, you have not lived, and I feel very sorry for you.

Nope, Vivaldi was made for the power user… or in my terms, the religious Googler.

Some background…1994, 2 developers [Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita ] created “Opera”. They stayed close to their users, continuously improving their software based on user feedback, and in 2015 they reached their next level in freeware browsers “Vivaldi”.

I’m still undecided…As I only started playing with this last week. And…I believe “All things Google is Good”, so I refuse to believe there’s a better browser than Chrome. Or perhaps, I’ve just been using Chrome so long, I didn’t think of what else could’ve improved. I assumed Google had checked all their boxes.

I would say however, that to customise practically everything, even whether you want your tab panel on the top or bottom etc. is kind of cool. I do like the visual tabs. I haven’t gone through all the settings for customisation, so I’m sure there’s a way to solve my problem, just haven’t really played enough with it yet.

If you’re like me, you’ll love side-by-side browsing. The adaptive interface is a nice touch, changing colour scheme and tabs to match whichever site you’re viewing, nothing to do with functionality, and literally just a “nice to have” I guess. The speed dial is also a really cool function. Apparently this was in Opera, but I wouldn’t know, I probably used Opera for like a month back in high school somewhere around the year 2000.

I’ve been told by a trusted source, that all the things I love about Google actually came from Opera, namely tabs. This is an innovation in browsing history. But to verify this statement, I will research further, only if I decide that Vivaldi is for me.

Mostly I use a 13″ Macbook, and for this reason, I don’t really like Vivaldi. It feels too cluttered on a laptop, as I am already a multi-window-multi-tab-type person. Or maybe this problem is easily solved, and I just haven’t figured the full extent of Vivaldi’s awesomeness. Once I find what I’m looking for, I will officially convert from Chrome to Vivaldi.

In the meantime, I think Vivaldi’s cool for larger monitors. It may suck on this 13″. But it will probably rock on 21″ and larger. If you started with Opera and plan on dying as an Opera fan, then you’ll love this.

View of my current browsing scenario…yes, I know, I should learn to close my tabs